Quite simply, the UFC was willing to pay him to go away and surrender his contracted fights.

But the PRIDE veteran didn’t want to do that, and following a hard-fought decision victory over Ben Rothwell at Saturday’s UFC 135 event, UFC president heaped praise on him.

In fact, it was White who convinced Hunt to attend the post-fight press conference for UFC 135, which took place Saturday at Denver’s Pepsi Center. Hunt (7-7 MMA, 2-1 UFC) fought Rothwell (31-8 MMA, 1-2 UFC) on the night’s pay-per-view main card.

“I actually asked Mark to come to this press conference,” White said. “Many of you probably don’t know, or some of you do know, when we bought PRIDE, he came as part of the PRIDE deal. It was back and forth, and basically I was like, ‘You know what? We’ll just pay you off what we owed you in the PRIDE deal.’ Mark Hunt said, ‘No, I want to come, and I want to fight.'”

Hunt, a tough-as-nails kickboxer stuck in a five-fight MMA losing skid, initially did little to curb skepticism about his move into the UFC. Sean McCorkle quickly tapped him out at UFC 119 a year ago, and many wrote off the 37-year-old Samoan as one-and-done with the UFC.

But despite a six-fight skid and zero victories since 2006, he wanted to press on.

The tenacity, of course, paid off. Earlier this year at UFC 127 in Australia, he blasted Chris Tuchscherer in a “Knockout of the Night” performance. And against Rothwell, a former top-10 heavyweight, he fought through crippling fatigue in Denver’s thin air with a surprisingly well-rounded attack.

“The guy’s got a ton of heart, and I’ve got a lot of respect for him,” White said. “I really wanted him to be at this press conference tonight. I have nothing but respect for Mark Hunt, and I’m actually glad that we worked this thing out and he did fight in the UFC.”

“He said, ‘No. I want to come in, and I want to fight, and I want to earn this money,'” White told MMAjunkie.com. “And he did it. I give him all the respect and the credit in the world. I’m glad that he opted to come in here and fight.

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